Aug 3
![Incoming-Link[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Incoming-Link1-300x185.jpg "Incoming-Link[1]")
… at least for this iteration of the blog. Apparently my adventures in interactive fiction have been linked by Jerz’s Literacy Weblog, a very nice blog site I had actually come across when I was searching around for interactive fiction resources a few months ago.
You can tell how (un)popular my blog is based on the disproportionate excitement over this single, solitary link. But hey, it’s a start! Thanks, Jerz!
Jul 31
![blog-tour-overload[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/blog-tour-overload1-300x272.gif "blog-tour-overload[1]")
I recently read a post on Coding Horror where Jeff Atwood was crowing about how well the blogging platform Moveable Type has worked for him over the last years. I’ve been a WordPress user ever since I started blogging, and hadn’t realized that in a default installation, the dynamic page creation WordPress uses can really limit the number of pages that you can serve at a time. And although I have yet to write that breakthrough post that gets on Digg, Reddit, and Slashdot all at the same time, I figured it might still be prudent to take steps to minimize the load on my relatively puny server.
After clicking through and reading some of the links describing different caching schemes for WordPress, I decided to grab one of the highly-rated plugins to handle caching this blog. I chose WP-SuperCache. Although it has a bewildering variety of options, it boils down to taking the dynamically-generated pages you publish, boiling them down to the raw HTML that ends up served to the client, and caching that on the server.
When this is done, the webserver only has to sling raw HTML to the browser, rather than make multiple round-trips through PHP to the MySQL database to construct the page. This should be both faster and lower load on the server.
So feel free to load up this site as much as you want, and send links to all your friends. Sure, even include another few hundred “Anubis Gates” spammers. I can take it!
Jul 30
![anubis[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/anubis1-179x300.jpg "anubis[1]")
I’m starting to get quite an inflow of spam on this site. That’s not too surprising in and of itself, but what is surprising is that 95% of it is going to a single, very old post — my book review of The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers.
I’m kind of at a loss to explain why, although I do have a few theories:
I’m really holding out for #5, but I’d settle for that as the plot of the next Tim Powers or Charles Stross novel.
![Super.Rhino_18_33_49_[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Super.Rhino_18_33_49_1-300x168.jpg "Super.Rhino_18_33_49_[1]")
Well, I now have a functional system, complete with monster video card. I officially dub it Super Rhino, after one of Thomas’ all-time favorite movie characters. So I’m done configuring the system, and that’s great.
How I got there was a bit crazy.
First off, I was wrong before. I did not have any IDE-style (Molex) connectors free in the case. I had only SATA and the one PCIe. I went to MicroCenter to look for SATA to PCIe or SATA to Molex adapters, and had no luck. Plenty of Molex to SATA, but not the other way around.
However, Newegg came to the rescue. They had SATA to Molex adapters, but after I did a bit of reading I found out that the wattage specs for SATA are about 25 W lower than the PCIe specs. Dangerous. Luckily, Newegg also had a “Molex x2 to PCIe” converter, so I got two of the SATA to Molex adapters and chained them into the double Molex to PCIe adapter, and presto! A case full of wires, but also a video card with two power connections, neither of which was loaded over spec.
So that worked great, and it booted up fine connected to my LCD monitor. But what I really wanted to do was see how it performed on the HDTV with the HDMI adapter. With that in mind, I carted it downstairs and plugged it in.
Nothing.
The screen stayed black, with a small “0033″ down in the lower-right corner. This was an obvious problem.
So I carted the LCD downstairs and plugged it in, VGA-style. It came up fine, so there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the card or the driver installation. I tried HDMI again. Nothing. I tried both together. Aha! It came up fine, detecting the HDMI as well and cloning the display from the LCD onto the HDTV. Progress!
I jimmied some of the settings around to try to get it to recognize the HDMI interface on boot, and restarted to test it.
Oops. Nothing. Tried both at once. Nothing. Tried the LCD alone. Nothing for a long time, then the gray-screen Vista purgatory that told me that it couldn’t start up the computer. Then 15 minutes in auto-repair before it threw up its digital hands and gave up. So I rebooted in Safe Mode.
That worked; I was able to log in and look around. I tried uninstalling the ATI driver package, but it gave me an error that referred to not being able to find the driver, so I figured Safe Mode probably didn’t load it. So I tried to reboot in low-res graphics mode, figuring I might have set the driver to a bad resolution or something.
Back to Vista Purgatory.
OK, that wasn’t it. Try “Last Known Good Configuration”. Bingo! Now that I was in, I could get in and modify the offending settings in the video drivers. Reboot. We’re back! At least basic VGA and DVI was working. Now to fix the HDMI…
I found an indication online that it might be a BIOS issue. As the last few BIOS updates were to fix issues with the newest Intel chips, and I have the newest generation of chip, I didn’t feel comfortable flashing to an older version. What I did find out was that people have had pretty good success letting their computer boot monitor-free until Vista loads, then connecting the HDMI. If I was trying to use this as a media center PC that would suck, but as I will only occasionally be carting the mini-tower downstairs to try out some game on the big screen, I can live with that.
So the end result was that I had Portal running on the plasma downstairs at full 1920 x 1080 resolution and maximum settings, getting smooth performance and sound through the HDMI cable.
I was done. And finally I was able to sleep.
![Super.Rhino_18_33_49_[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Super.Rhino_18_33_49_1.JPG "Super.Rhino_18_33_49_[1]")
Jul 20
I would like to introduce my new video card, a Sapphire Radeon 4870 with 1GB. I wish I could tell you that it was running in my machine, but it isn’t. Not for lack of trying; I did manage to wedge it into my case last night (a tight fit), but then discovered the Achilles’ Heel of the Dell XPS 435. The card takes two 6-pin power inputs. My power supply provides one.
So I stared at the card for a few minutes, cursed under my breath, and reluctantly RMA-ed the card and ordered a slightly less beefy card that only requires one power plug. Problem solved, even if I wasn’t quite as happy about it.
But then I came in this morning and talked to Matt Funk about it, and he suggested using a power cable splitter. After some investigation, I discovered several different types of splitter and converter cables that are available. Since I have several SATA- and IDE-type cables free, I’ll just convert one of those over to 6-pin and I should be good to go.
So the RMA is ignored, the new order cancelled, and my mood is substantially improved. I’ll let you know if a successful installation makes that more permanent or not.
There’s the blemish on my new computer. Right there. No, there. See it? It’s the tiny little mar on the finish on the top of the case. I looked over the whole rest of the thing and I cannot find another defect. That one blemish is what Dell knocked $100 off the price of this machine for.
Not that I’m complaining! I got it hooked up last night, and although I don’t have time to really get it configured the way I like it, I can tell that it’s going to be a great machine.
Except for that darned spot. I don’t know; I may need to send it back to the factory. I’m just not sure I can deal with the hideous deformity on this otherwise pristine machine.
Jun 21
![kemingad[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/kemingad1.gif "kemingad[1]")
I ran across Ironic Sans the other day and was immediately impressed. The link I followed was for a wall of outlets, which was impressive enough, but the rest of the site also seems to be a real fund of intriguing and amusing ideas from the fertile brain of David Friedman, a photographer in his offline life.
Histographic steganography, monoblock Tetris, and the “bulbdial clock” can all be found on this blog; if you are interested in the intersection of technology, design, and pop culture you’ll probably find this a good read.
![chain[1]](http://www.wigdahl.net/quern/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/chain1-225x300.jpg "chain[1]")
Warning: The Last Psychiatrist is more addictive than a benzodiazepine cocktail. But it’s worth it.
The Last Psychiatrist (TLP), who blogs anonymously, is an excellent writer with both a biting wit and an encyclopedic knowledge of psychiatric practice. He blogs about psychiatry, narcissism, the conflation of social issues with psychiatry, politics, narcissism, the economy, media issues, and, finally, narcissism.
On the narcissism: TLP is not shy in referring to the current generation of adults as the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists in History, among other, similarly-unflattering epithets. His thesis is that from the constant exposure to pop culture images and action movies selling a self-centered Hero’s Journey, a generation of self-obsessed, permanently-adolescent adults has been spawned. His reviews of movies such as Wanted and The Matrix must be read to be believed; they are marvels of psychological analysis.
Some of his most fascinating articles, though, are the ones that deal with the ins and outs of psychopharmacological research, both the scientific side and the political and economic side. He makes a strong case that the focus on financial bias has done little to improve the quality of research, and that certain drugs (Depakote, in particular) have been promoted far beyond what any objective analysis of the supporting research could justify.
It’s fascinating stuff, and I consider TLP the best blogging find I’ve made in years. Read him!
May 24
Well, the Club Chalupa is back at Taco Bell. Normally I avoid Taco Bell. It’s not that the food tastes bad, but I always feel that the astoundingly non-nutritious offerings are leaching the life-giving vitamins and minerals right out of my body. Also, the Fire sauce tastes vaguely dirty, like its secret ingredient is a pinch of cigarette ash.
The Club Chalupa is really the only Taco Bell item that I enjoy enough to overcome my distaste for the restaurant in general. I’ll be going there today after racquetball to see for myself if the new incarnation of the CC is a worthy successor to the 2002 version. And lest you think that I’m over the top writing a blog entry about the Club Chalupa, check out these guys….
(edit) Well, I’m happy to report that the Club Chalupa is everything it used to be. Since a comparison just wouldn’t be fair without the degenerate taste of Fire sauce, I slathered the contents of one packet over the chalupa before eating. I was immediately taken back to 2002, the heyday of the original Club Chalupa. As far as my gustatory and olfactory senses can tell, it’s exactly the same.
Sometimes you can go home again.
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